Artist: Angry Angles
Album: S/T
Label: Reissue (Goner)
Released: May 20, 2016

In the world of what’s considered ‘classic modern’ garage rock, Angry Angles always come into topic due to the nature of the band’s history. These new recordings were supposed to have disappeared, that Jay had deleted them from his hard drive, at least that’s the rumour I heard years ago.

This was an odd in-between period. Post Lost Sounds, Jay’s’ solo stuff had just started to take off from a semi-mainstream stance… although he had being doing that for a while too. I think Final Solutions was around as well.

Alix Brown left Atlanta after the Lids broke up, and that was the best possible move for her, as the Atlanta scene was going into a more power pop and mod direction. The Carbonas dominated the punk scene there at the time, but even that was short lived. I was a teen at the time, and the Memphis scene was at its strongest and most prolific.

It wasn’t just Jay, there were so many bands at the time. Being from Muscle Shoals, two hours away in a small town, where maybe you had one or two rock n’ roll bands that were active at one time. The people there just weren’t that creative in Muscle Shoals at the time, it was a weird dry spell – lack of venues, lack of interest.

In Memphis at this point, there were eight or ten active bands with four to five shows a week at different venues. It was so influential to me as musician that when people ask me even to this day what my favourite city for music was, Memphis will always be the answer. When I wanted to escape the harsh reality of work or my rough family life or whatever, this was the place to go. It made me believe in myself. To keep doing it, no matter how hard or tough things got.

So when I heard these recordings were finally seeing the light of day it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The unreleased version of ‘Things are Moving’ starts things right off with something brand new to the ears. There are five new tracks to play with here, one of them being an early version of ‘I Cant Do it Anymore,’ which ended up on his final album Watch Me Fall.

It had been years since I heard any of this stuff too, so it was definitely a time machine experience. All those Urinals, Wire, Devo, and Adverts influences are all at work here. Even after all this time it’s still fresh, and still highly influential.

The Oblivians cover of ‘Memphis Creep’ is included here too, as that was only available via a compilation. It’s a fresh take on a piece of work that will forever have its place in rock n’ roll history. The digital download also features a live show that has an early version of ‘Death is Forming’ and ‘Blood Visions,’ which were featured on the album of the same title.

Even true historians of the genre consider it a punk classic. If you only buy one record in 2016, let it be this one. It’s a piece of history and it shouldn’t be ignored under any circumstances.

-Justin Crumpton